Standards

Stephen Downes' post over at Half an Hour on the likely future of the Semantic Web has sparked a rich and fascinating discussion. Stephen's post started with web standards, but his wider message touches on issues of business practice, corporate vs OSS development models, identity and data management, and plain old user preferences, among many other issues.

I recently submitted a proposal to the ALT-C 2007 conference about personal archiving practices - investigating some of the ways that we take care of our personal data (or don't) in an era of fast-multiplying accounts (commercial and non-commercial) and ever-more-widely distributed personal data. Issues of trust are becoming critical - who can I trust to take care of my data? (See also the wiki notes for the seminar organised by Graham Attwell and the Bazaar team, "Hey Dude, Where's My Data?").

For me, it all starts and ends with the individual. So this is the section of Stephen's post that really spoke to me:

In this 19 minute recording, we'll hear from the National Portfolio Coordinator of the Australian National University, Christopher Blackall.  Listen in as he shares thoughts on institutional repositories, standards, and more.


This interview is provided courtesy of CNI and was recorded at their 2006 Fall Task Force Meeting.  The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity.  You can learn more about CNI at their web site, http://www.cni.org

In this 12 minute recording, we'll hear from Ed Meachen about work on educational gaming, patents, and more. 

See also:

• An Interview with Kurt Squire
• An Interview with Matthew Stafford

Sun vice president and fellow Graham Hamilton has apparently left sun over their open sourcing of Java.

Hamilton, who in the past spearheaded Sun's work on compliance, interoperability and portability in Java sees the open sourcing of the platform as a bad thing because it erodes the technical uniformity of the platform, by allowing others to build incompatible versions. He is, of course, right. Open sourcing Java will allow third parties to fork the platform, but I have no doubt that the network effect would cause these to wither and die.

cheers, stuart

USB has just been standardised as the new way for mobile phones to talk to extremely large SIM cards. USB won not because it was the best option, nor because it answered a burning need, nor because the big players wanted it; it looks like it won because it was patent free (unlike MMC, another contender) and open (allowing to be perceived as neutral). It still faces the battle of getting implemented, but I suspect that implementation costs will continue to drop as the cost and quality of the silicon designs to implement the the standard continue to fall, driven by the use of USB in other fields.

cheers stuart

In this 10 minute recording, we'll hear from AACRAO's VP for Information Technology, Jerry Bracken.  Listen in as he shares some thoughts on key issues of interest to registrars, the Spellings Report, and EDI trends of interest.

AACRAO - American Association of Collegiate Registrars
http://www.aacrao.org

In this 19 minute recording, we'll hear from Michael Sessa, the Executive Director of PESC, the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council. Listen in as he introduces PESC, progress on the standards front and much more. 

In this 26 minute recording, we'll hear from Rob Abel, CEO of the IMS Global Learning Consortium. Listen in as Marliu Goodyear hosts a discussion about standards, course packs and more.

There's been some coverage of a new 3.1 release from the good people at the Linux Standard Base (LSV). I've written in the past about how the LSB is a crucial convergent force within the diverse Linux community.

"The Linux Standard Base makes things better all around for RealNetworks," said Jeff Ayars, Vice President, BPS Technology, RealNetworks. "As an ISV it improves the reliability of our product by giving us a consistent platform to write to and test against, and as a service provider that manages and maintains hundreds of Linux systems, it provides us a more consistent system to administer and increases the pool of talented administrators for us to choose from."

"Novell has been a long-time, active supporter of the Linux Standard Base," said Markus Rex, CTO of Open Platform Solutions for Novell. "The launch of this specification is an important step for Linux on the desktop. Standards like LSB are essential if ISVs are to target the Linux desktop. At Novell, we think the desktop market is extremely strategic, and we will continue to invest in driving desktop innovation and desktop standards."

A new UCISA report has Moodle and Bodington each with 8% of the installed base, beaten soundly by Blackboard(43), WebCT(37) and in-house developed systems.